A good example of a contracted/constricted mind is one that's filled with greed. The antidote would be to practice generosity. When you're giving wholeheartedly to another person the mind is anything but contracted/constricted. That's why practicing generosity is the antidote, because it puts the mind in the opposite state of being contracted/constricted.

A good example of a contracted/constricted mind is one that's filled with greed. The antidote would be to practice generosity. When you're giving wholeheartedly to another person the mind is anything but contracted/constricted. That's why practicing generosity is the antidote, because it puts the mind in the opposite state of being contracted/constricted.

Yes, and I have the sense of constricted mind as a self-absorbed mind, inward rather than outward looking, claustrophobic rather than spacious.

A contracted mind is a mind with sloth and torpor, like Mkoll pointed out.
Why contracted?, because thats what happens to your mind, it gets tight and small, everything you do is troublesome, hard, restricted, so you zone out and get into dreamy states.

A contracted mind is a mind with sloth and torpor, like Mkoll pointed out.
Why contracted?, because thats what happens to your mind, it gets tight and small, everything you do is troublesome, hard, restricted, so you zone out and get into dreamy states.

Regards.

Yes, this seems to be the most applicable explanation.
Then what is expanded mind? (without saying "free from sloth and torpor")
A person free from sloth and torpor is equated to a person released from the prison.

There are some interesting parallels that brain scientists have discovered about the workings of the brain in relation to the more troubled states of mind vs balanced states of mind. They have found that the amygdala at the base of the brain is responsible for fear and survival and the more instinctual feelings that we all have. Some have said it corresponds to the 'animal' in us.

They have noticed that when reasoning, which is done at the cortex and pre-frontal cortex enter the picture, this tends to override the messages from the amygdala and calms it. The reasoning part of the brain actually grows in size at the pre-frontal cortex and with advanced practitioners exerts greater communication with the amygdala and stops our normal emotional reactivity to experience and replaces it with calmness and balance that actually changes the wiring in the brain permanently.

The amygdala seems to be what is associated with citta, and mano is associated with that part of the brain responsible for reasoning and calm analysis. The contracted/constricted mind seems very much an activity of citta. When introspective attention is focused on citta, mano begins to override and calm the emotional, agitated citta by relaxing the automatic responses we call habits and re-orienting them to a different part of the brain where mano functions in a conscious way. This seems to allow the natural flow of experience to be brought to all our activities and a deepening of meditative activity to take place through this relaxation and re-orientation away from citta and its automatic emotional response.

I understand expanded mind as Brahama Viharas.
So attachment, aversion and ignorance seems to be the contracted mind.

This is the wrong interpretation.

I don't think so. It may be not the technical explanation.

This appears to be the wrong interpretation because in MN 10 the term translated as 'contracted' (sankhitta) is not paired with, as an opposite to, the term mahaggataṃ (expanded). The term 'sankhitta' is defined in SN 51.20 as related to a lack of energy. In MN 10, the opposite of 'sankhitta' is 'vikkhittaṃ', which implies too much energy, as also explained in SN 51.20.